I’m living in Haiti and am trying to find and adapt seeds to the local climate. It’s a pretty niche climate here. There are very mild summers and very mild winters (max range 10C-30C). I thought that runner beans would be great here but the powdery mildew seems to get them very quickly. The scarlet runners do set seeds though. They basic make a few pods and then die. I’ve ordered every commercial variety I can find in the US, which only amounts to about six varieties. How can I go about finding more varieties? I can easily ship to a friend’s address in the US. Maybe I could ship directly to Haiti and avoid all importing issues (Haiti is basically lawless so no seed import issues). I’m new to this so maybe I’m missing some really obvious sources of unique seeds sources.
Hi! What varieties have you already found, and what shops did you use?
Wikipedia’s page for runner beans includes this list of cultivars and information:
- ‘Aeron Purple Star’ (not available commercially)
- ‘Black Runner’
- ‘Butler’
- ‘Case Knife’
- ‘Fasolia gigantes’, a white bean which originated in Greece.
- ‘Hammond’s Dwarf’
- ‘Japanese Runner’, sold in Canada and USA under the names of “Akahana” or “Shinshu runner”
- ‘Painted Lady’
- ‘Pickwick Dwarf’
- ‘Polestar’
- ‘Scarlet Runner’
- ‘White Dutch Runner’
–P. coccineus subsp. darwinianus is a cultivated subspecies, commonly referred to as the botil bean in Mexico.
–The related species considered most useful for interbreeding with P. coccineus to increase its genetic diversity are P. dumosus and P. vulgaris.
Sunset (MIgardener)
Ayocote Morado Bean (MIgardener)
Scarlet (True Leaf Market)
Prizewinner (True Leaf Market)
Lady Di (Territorial Seed)
Painted Lady (Annie’s Heirloom)
Black Coat (Annie’s Heirloom)
Golden Sunshine (Annie’s Heirloom)
Hidatsa Red Indian (Baker Creek)
Black Knight (Baker Creek)
I guess that’s better than I thought it was.
Have you ever seen a P. conccineus hybridized with P. vulgaris? If so, what was it like?
I also would have expected runner beans to do well there, given their prominence in Oaxaca. Rancho Gordo is working with some farmers in Oaxaca to bring additional varieties to the US food market (the Ayocote varieties on their website are all P. coccineus; sometimes they have others). They run a Facebook group of people growing their beans in their home garden, so you won’t be the craziest person they’ve talked to all day.
Oh, I have no direct experience with runner beans, my only attempt with scarlet runners had no germination. The info about hybridizing was still from Wikipedia; I find the idea intriguing though. I looked it up and it appears there’s a natural hybridization rate between the two of up to almost 7%, kinda crazy for two separate species. Here’s a 1970 article on it, which has a convenient summary right at the top:
There’s a thread from a year-ish ago from a small group of us growing out some of those hybrids from the USDA seed bank. Mine didn’t produce.
I would have thought that they would have done well too. I used to grow them in Canada and they grew amazingly well there so I know what they’re capable of. I suspect it’s the humidity that is the issue here even though it’s not hot. I think that before everything was stripped bare this probably would have been a cloud forest.
Thanks too for pointing me to Rancho Gordo. That’s a neat site. I added a couple more varieties to a cart there.
That’s really interesting. I had found one hybrid of P. vulgaris with P. vulgaris available from Victory Seeds but while I was shopping it disappeared from my cart and from the site. I was disappointed to not get those in time but maybe I can make my own. It would be really interesting if they could be crossed with a P. vigna to give them some more heat tolerance but that might just be too optimistic.
Someone has already mentioned Mexico. A friend who was obsessed with food plants and who used to travel widely mentioned coming across landraces of runner beans there. If you have any contacts in Mexico perhaps they could look out for varieties for you.
Given the warmth and humidity I’d expect snake beans, cowpeas (both are Vigna unguiculata) and lima beans (Phaseolus lunatus) to do reasonably well. I believe these species originated in the humid tropics.
This very thing fascinates me as well! Excellent Find by the way! Also wasn’t P. coccineus more out crossing? If you could get those Promiscuous Outcrossing traits into P. vulgaris, then maybe make it more easy to landrace? I’ve heard that’s why Common Beans were Hard to landrace & Easy to Heirloom.